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Dumaguete City, Philippines

Emmanuel Surban

IT Operations Leader & Technology Strategist

IT operations • Data centre • Virtualisation • Service delivery • Infrastructure • Team leadership

Twenty-two years of one job, done in one place: keeping other people’s infrastructure available. Data centres, virtualised production estates, and the teams that run them, from Dumaguete City since 2004.

Today that is IT Operations Senior Manager at Wonders, a New York technology company, with eight people reporting in and accountability for the availability and security of every system the business runs on.

Before that, Silliman University from 1998 – 2002, then most of two decades at SPi Global, where the work was an entire outsourcing facility: its data centre, its floor build-outs, and the capital and operating budget that paid for both.

The measure of the job is that nothing happens. A server room is where it is actually decided, and the strategy is set against the business plan rather than against the asset register.

22+

Years in IT operations

1,268

Seats built, moved or expanded

8

People reporting in today

Infrastructure • Service delivery • Vendors

Work history

Career timeline

  1. August 2021 – present

    IT Operations Senior Manager

    WondersDumaguete City5 yrs 4 mos

    Runs IT operations and infrastructure for a New York technology company, from Dumaguete, with eight people reporting in.

    Responsibilities & key contributions

    • Accountable for the availability and security of every company system and the data inside it
    • Runs infrastructure, service delivery and vendor relationships end to end
    • Sets IT strategy against the business plan rather than against the asset register
    • Joined as IT Service Manager and was promoted inside the first year

  2. March 2020 – August 2021

    IT Project Manager

    Cabrera Business SolutionsPhilippines1 yr 6 mos

    Delivered infrastructure and software projects across the business, from scoping through handover.

    Responsibilities & key contributions

    • Ran IT infrastructure and software projects end to end
    • Coordinated cross-functional teams against fixed milestones and budgets
    • Assessed and recommended technology against changing business requirements

  3. September 2012 – March 2020

    IT Operations Senior Manager

    SPi GlobalDumaguete City7 yrs 7 mos

    Held availability for an entire outsourcing facility, and carried the capital and operating budget that paid for it.

    Responsibilities & key contributions

    • Led planning and execution of the Dumaguete data centre expansion
    • Implemented VMware vSphere with vMotion, High Availability and Fault Tolerance, consolidating production servers
    • Stood up IT for a 48-seat healthcare programme and a 320-seat facility build-out
    • Owned CAPEX and OPEX for all Dumaguete IT operations

  4. April 2012 – August 2012

    Technical Engineer, Web Hosting

    Dreamscape NetworksDubai, United Arab Emirates5 mos

    Server administration and escalation for Linux and Windows hosting estates serving the Middle East and North Africa.

    Responsibilities & key contributions

    • Administered Apache and IIS estates on Linux and Windows
    • Supported domains, DNS, Exchange Server and BlackBerry Server
    • Managed cPanel and Plesk control panels and virtual server environments

  5. February 2007 – April 2012

    IT Operations Manager

    SPi GlobalDumaguete City5 yrs 3 mos

    Arrived supervising the technical support group and left running IT operations, with engineers and systems administrators underneath.

    Responsibilities & key contributions

    • Managed engineers and administrators against enterprise client SLAs
    • Technical lead on the move of SPi-Bacong into the 900-seat SPi-Bagacay facility
    • Supported consolidation and virtualisation of production and corporate servers
    • Promoted from Technical Support Supervisor in September 2010

Earlier professional career

Earlier career

IS and QA Manager

1&1 Internet · Cebu City

Information systems and quality assurance for the Philippine arm of a European hosting provider.

February 2006 – January 2007

Earlier career

Second Level Technical Support Engineer

Bigfoot Global Solutions · Cebu City

Where it started: second-line escalation on hosting and systems issues.

February 2004 – January 2005

Selected work

What he has built

Technical lead

SPi-Bacong into SPi-Bagacay

SPi Global · 2007 – 2012

A whole operating site moved into a new building: servers, network, endpoints and the people using them, with the production floor expected to open on schedule.

Planning and execution lead

Dumaguete data centre expansion

SPi Global · 2012 – 2020

The facility data centre expanded to carry a growing production estate, taken from requirement through design, procurement and cutover without interrupting the floor.

Implementation owner

vSphere consolidation

SPi Global · 2012 – 2020

Production and corporate servers collapsed onto VMware vSphere with vMotion, High Availability and Fault Tolerance, so hardware maintenance stopped meaning downtime.

IT infrastructure owner

Floor build-outs

SPi Global · 2012 – 2020

New operating capacity built from empty floor: a 320-seat expansion and a 48-seat healthcare programme, each with its own compliance and uptime expectations.

Skills & depth

Core expertise

Infrastructure and data centre

The estate itself, and whether it stays up.

  • VMware vSphere
  • vMotion, High Availability, Fault Tolerance
  • Data centre design and expansion
  • Server administration
  • Windows Server
  • Linux
  • Active Directory
  • Exchange Server
  • Network administration

Service and operations

How the estate is run, measured and paid for.

  • ITIL-aligned service delivery
  • SLA management
  • Incident and problem management
  • IT security and availability
  • Vendor management
  • CAPEX and OPEX budgeting
  • Business continuity

Leadership and delivery

Eight people report in today. The number has been larger.

  • Team leadership
  • IT strategy
  • Project delivery
  • Stakeholder management
  • Facility build-outs
  • Technology evaluation

Hosting and web

From the hosting years, and still in use: this site is built and shipped with it.

  • Apache
  • Nginx
  • IIS
  • DNS
  • MySQL
  • cPanel and Plesk
  • Docker
  • React and TypeScript
  • Vite and Tailwind CSS

Where the twenty-two years went

Operations18 yrs 2 mos

Wonders · SPi Global

Projects1 yr 6 mos

Cabrera Business Solutions

Systems1 yr

1&1 Internet

Support1 yr

Bigfoot Global Solutions

Hosting5 mos

Dreamscape Networks

The toolkit

  • VMware vSphere
  • vMotion, High Availability, Fault Tolerance
  • Data centre design and expansion
  • Server administration
  • Windows Server
  • Linux
  • Active Directory
  • Exchange Server
  • Network administration
  • ITIL-aligned service delivery
  • SLA management
  • Incident and problem management
  • IT security and availability
  • Vendor management
  • CAPEX and OPEX budgeting
  • Business continuity
  • Team leadership
  • IT strategy
  • Project delivery
  • Stakeholder management
  • Facility build-outs
  • Technology evaluation
  • Apache
  • Nginx
  • IIS
  • DNS
  • MySQL
  • cPanel and Plesk
  • Docker
  • React and TypeScript
  • Vite and Tailwind CSS

Credentials

Certifications & education

Service management

ITIL Foundation

Service management: how IT services are designed, delivered and improved.

Facilities and availability

Certified Data Centre Professional

Facilities and operations: power, cooling, cabling and availability tiers.

Virtualisation

VMware Certified Professional 5, Data Center Virtualization

vSphere design, deployment and administration for production estates.

Education

B.S. Business Computer Application

Silliman University, 1998 – 2002.

Worth a conversation?

Leadership roles, infrastructure that has outgrown its last design, or a floor that needs building by someone who has done it before.

LinkedIn
Email
[email protected]
Based in
Dumaguete City, Negros Oriental, Philippines